Mom Visits

My Mom flew in for a visit this past Saturday.  It has been so good to have her here.  Lyla is especially happy to have her Grandma here.  She won’t let Grandma leave her side and most of the time wants Grandma to hold her, get her out of her car seat, get her juice, etc.  I have suddenly become chopped liver.  Not that I really mind.  We are both just thankful for a visit with her.

Mom and I have had a chance to do a little sightseeing.   We are enjoying spending time together and visiting.  I wish she could stay longer…

This afternoon, Jack and I are going to fly into Seville, Spain and then drive through southern Portugal.  Thanks to my Mom, we get to go without Lyla!  We are really looking forward to meeting our good friends, Jeff and Kristin, in Spain and enjoying vacation with them.  Hopefully Lyla and Grandma will also have a good visit without us.

Stonehenge

Salisbury Cathedral

A New Home

We have been in England just a little over 2 months now.  I like it here.  We still have a ways to go before it will really feel like home but we are on our way.  Maybe if they would put in a Target and Michael’s it would help the transition.   It is a beautiful country and we love our village.  We've met some great people and are looking forward to developing friendships as well as meeting more new people.

We spent the first 6 weeks here in temporary housing on the military base.  On September 20 we moved into our house, which is just a few miles east of St. Neots.   Now that all of our things are unpacked, we have finally begun settling into our house, which by the way is fantastic.  The house we found is not the norm for the UK in that it has tons of space, tall ceilings and a big wide staircase.   But alas it still has very few closets.  So a quick trip to good old Ikea and Lyla has a nice little wardrobe for her clothes. Pictures of the house coming soon...

We’ve had lots of new experiences, most of them good.  Driving is probably the craziest, most stressful thing I’ve done so far.  Driving on the opposite side of the road was totally against all of my instincts.   But, now I’ve pretty well gotten the hang of it, although the roads and driving are quite different here.  The roads are all very narrow and curvy with little to no shoulder or should I say verge as they would say here.  The speed limit is higher and usually 60 mph unless going through a village where it is 30 mph or on a major carriageway where it is 70 mph.  Unless of course, you come upon a tractor going 15 mph, which is a quite common occurrence, even on the four lane highways.  Don’t even get me started on all of the roundabouts.  I have yet to see a stop sign and have only come across a few stoplights because every, and I mean every, intersection has a roundabout.  You think one roundabout is bad try entering a double roundabout, where there are two roundabouts connected but each is treated separately when it comes to merging!  Enough about the driving, it isn’t really all that bad.  It has just taken some getting used to.  Now I just hope that I don’t go down the road the wrong way when I come home to the states.

The Church of St. James  built in 1280.
The village church at the end of our street. 

  

 

Lyla in front of our house.